The Khufu ship sealed into a pit next to the Great Pyramid at Giza. Hidden away since around 2500BCE, rediscovered in 1954, reconstructed by Ahmed Youssef Moustafa, put on display in 1982. A hand-sewn ship. The display of course includes some of Mr. Moustafa’s tools and a model of the ship from which he worked.…
Photos from the Atlantic Monthly of Chinese solar panel installations. From left, hillside solar, rooftop solar, even livestock pen solar. Herb farms growing beneath solar panel installations, a solar panel installation over an aquatic farm built over a land subsidence caused by coal mining, and a herd of deer passing a solar array in a…
Just a handmade table, sitting on the sidewalk in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, which is the kind of place where you see something like this or something else even more amazing every time you turn a corner.
[April 2010] I know, I know, when you go to Peru it’s supposed to be all about Macchu Picchu, and we went there, too, but I was at least equally wowed by Moray. They are massive, and phenomenal works of architecture and engineering. There are these three huge circular pits with concentric levels of terraces…
[May 2025] I’m here to tell you, those northern Mediterraneans will build ANYWHERE, no matter how precarious. We saw two smoking volcanoes on our trip, Vesuvius (and the Pompeians have rebuilt their city right back up the lower slopes of their pyromaniacal neighbor) and Stromboli (an island volcano that has been erupting steadily for two…
#inmygarden 2025 It has been the coldest, wettest, windiest spring in my memory. It didn’t hit 60F in my yard until this week, when we finally got a stretch of decent weather. But just to remind us that Mother Nature always has the last laugh we also got some haze from the Canadian wildfires. It…
[May 2025] Corsica. I have found my spiritual home. The exquisite port of Bonifacio, with our ship center left. That thick green covering the opposite cliff is called the maquis, which is a mixture of plants and herbs, like immortelle, rosemary, thyme, juniper, sage, lavender, and more, all of which perfume the air of the…
[May 17, 2025] A panoramic shot of the beautiful little bay of Nora, a seaside community outside of Cagliari, Sardinia. The ancient Romans used it to get away from the city. Basically it’s the Hamptons, or Lake City in Seattle or Homer in Alaska. (photo RobR) There are towers on both headlands and all the…
[May 12, 2025] Ciao! from Isola d’Elba! Yes, that would be the same island to which the European powers in their infinite wisdom decided to exile Napoleon the first time in 1814, and from which he escaped 300 days later (in that same fit of collective idiocy TPTB allowed him to bring 400, or maybe…
It was worth hopscotching across half the planet to stay in the Hotel Negresco in Nice, France. Built in 1912 (bad timing there), it is as much art museum as it is a piece of Art Deco itself. Both wings of each floor are dedicated to showcasing the art collected by owner Madame Jeanne Augier…
